


In For A Book, In For An Archive

by Liminal_Hymnal



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Canon Typical Weirdness, Everyone in this podcast has been through so much they deserve to be happy too, Friends to Lovers, I'm taking the tasty bits and adding some of my own seasonings and sides, Multi, Other, Reader is Nonbinary, Slow Burn, You get to date TWO avatars!, be warned it will get stupid at times, so I'm gonna treat canon like I'm a picky eater carving up a roast, we Big Gay for yellow doors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22780111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liminal_Hymnal/pseuds/Liminal_Hymnal
Summary: Life is so goddamn weird already. Why not embrace it and hope that when you find a place amongst the chaos, the chaos will embrace you in turn?
Relationships: Helen Richardson/Reader, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Michael Shelley/Reader
Comments: 12
Kudos: 57





	In For A Book, In For An Archive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A cursed book upends your life. You fear the worst and hope for the best while knowing that reality cares not for what is wanted.

How do you go about making a statement? What happened exactly wasn't as explainable as one would hope, but for the sake of the question an attempt had to be made. Let's see....perhaps it should start with a time and place. 

In a small town on a late spring day, a sunset had breeched through the earlier rain clouds, soaking the various shops in a soft orange glow. The warmth of the afternoon was slowly slipping to make way for the nights cold just like the various folks who were going home tired and worn out after a long day at work. The same usual day for the usual person. 

There were small exceptions to this routine such as yourself. Within this small town there was a thrift shop that was going out of business, in which you stood in as to peruse the rack of worn-out books in the back, hoping to find something worth a read. A rare sidetracked stop during the rush to get home and sleep, but a needed one nonetheless. 

It had been quite a nasty day at work. Thoughts had taken their toll via deep-seeded exhaustion. Even away from that store you could feel the depression bleeding into your soul with each flicker of the fluorescent lights above. 

Ah, how fickle the job market was. One minute its easy and mostly fine, if not monotonous and a waste of personal time. The next its difficult and messy emotion wise due to being fired over the inability to do a whole team's worth of work by yourself perfectly. It hurt like hell but you weren't a quitter. 

A setback to be damned, but you had enough money to last for a good while without it and hopefully, soon something to override the current moment. Right now you needed an escape. Sure, this thift store wasn't in the top three places you'd like to be right now. But hey, going out of business sales normally had good deals for random knickknacks, and maybe purchasing some well worn stories would give you a bit of temporary relief. 

Regretfully the reading material selection here was slim. So far all the books were self-help guides or incredibly trashy romance novels. Maybe some of them were written well, but honestly, reading about diets and airbrushed abs on a vampire wasn't the way to spend a Saturday. Or the week in general, seeing as you no longer had anything of importance to whittle down the hours with. 

Plumes of dust collected under your fingernails as you kept the search up for a book. Romance, romance, get rich quick, moldy recipe book, romance, conspiracy theories, all trash. That is....until an all black spine had caught your attention. One with a maintained glossy sheen to it barring the dust, and the title was written in a golden cursive that glinted charmingly in the light; 

**Method Cartooning: Inks Ichor & Ilk.**

Taking it off the rack you narrowed your eyes at its title. The name wasn't something you'd ever heard before, nor did you know of any author named Ner (it was hard to tell what the full name was due to most of the sticker being scratched off), but judging by its condition it certainly looked to be of high importance. Compared to the other books this one looked relatively untouched. A little on the heavy side as well, maybe a pound or two, enough to be at least a novel. 

As nice as the exterior looked it implored you to flip through a few pages to see its contents. And surprise, within the hard cover laid what else but all manner of comic book illustrations, with small blurbs and paragraphs detailing various run downs on how cartoons worked, so on and so forth. Obviously you should've known from its title what you'd find. All in all a pretty standard art book with all things considered. Nothing too special. 

_Yet._

What drew in your interest though was how the drawings were _ridiculously_ detailed for a how-to guide. 

The art was striking! With its assortment of styles and fluidity, there was surprisingly not a single line lost for the reader despite the vivid colors soaked into each pen stroke. Everything from the background to a character had a depth to it that drew your view more inwards with each glance, how nothing was left blank, and how it all seemed to move vividly as if alive. 

You rubbed your eyes after closing the book. In any case, should it really be bought? Realistically no, as you didn't quite consider yourself an artist enough to fully appreciate a professional guide like this. There was bound to be someone else who'd cry in joy to have this on their hands. Someone who could fully utilize it. 

But....you _did_ like to doodle, paint, or craft in your spare time, so perhaps this book would offer some useful tips and tricks. Plus, it was difficult to look away from the masterpieces thriving on each page for a few minutes let alone never seeing them again. So why not get it? Even if it wasn't one perfectly tailored to your tastes, you wanted a story to be immersed in not a bunch of tutorials, today sucked and it was only ten bucks. Better in your (somewhat) capable hands then thrown out in a back alley dumpster. 

Yeah. Unfortunately, that meant you bought it. 

The drive home was nothing out of the ordinary. A stop for gas, a small wait in traffic, the normal commute. It was the same when you finally shuffled into your little home with purchases in tow. 

There was an air of activity that buzzed throughout your place not unlike the type you'd feel when walking into a party when all the guests had just left. A subtle warmth, the lights looked brighter when you turned them on, it was hard to put into words. Not cozy. But alive in a way. Whatever reason there was for it was quickly written off as residual fatigue. 

_No big deal_ , you thought. This wasn't the first time you had come home drained and far from for you to deny a well-deserved nap when the feeling came around. But before diving into bed you wanted to settle in more as always. Maybe make a snack and sit down to read a chapter or two before going to bed and reworking your resume first thing in the morning. 

Or, if inspiration hit, you'd shuffle the whole resume thing farther back into the day. It depended on how good the tips were in the book, really. When you flipped through the first time there were paragraphs but it wasn't like you actually _read_ any part of them to know how simple or difficult they were made to be to read. 

Oh, but flipping through this time it proved to be a mix between the two. You sat on the couch next to a carefully (okay, thrown together) sandwich as you kneaded what you understood of the new information into your brain. At first it was like browsing an informational childrens book, then it steadily became more scholarly until now where there were long strings of words you had never seen before. You weren't even sure if these were real words or not as they all seemed to melt into nigh incomprehensible academic gibberish. 

Despite that, there was a feeling of excitement knocking around the corners of your skull as you struggled to read on, leaving your mental state lost fully in the pages of seamless artwork as the world around spun in a lazy haze. Which was of no importance considering your body had grown weightless about six pages in. 

This should've worried you, but it was once again chalked up to fatigue and being the same kind of detachment one got from getting involved in a good read. 

Time pressed on past your perception. A migraine had beaten itself into your skull much like a jackhammer to concrete while you did your best to ignore how each page made it stronger. You couldn't even recall what drawings or words marked the paper at this point. The dizziness became overwhelming whenever you tried to pry your gaze from a page. 

Perhaps you had grown physically incapable of putting the book down. Maybe you wanted to finish it in one sitting, you don't know. 

All you remembered despite the intense nausea and mania was that when you finally reached the end, it suddenly went away without a trace. There was no leftovers as you stared vacantly at the pitch-black final page. In the middle was a tab, one that held an ornate quill thats base was braided with a black feather entwined between its two strands, and it felt unusually heavy in your hand. 

The tip of it looked rusted and it was ice cold to the touch. That's what your mind zeroed in on before.....well. Before everything nosedived into a deep end of horror. 

The next moment was a blur of transfixion, the open book cradled close to your ribs while the other hand gripped the pen, and then a sort of stabbing and a sort of sense of _something_ being pulled through. Screaming did nothing as your hand continued its assault steadily, not by your own volition (as if that needed to be said), though guided by a nonexistent voice who whispered in doublets through the ruffle of paper. What was able to be made out was that it _needed_ an artist to sign for its craft. To give it purpose. _To let it live._

Possession is a strong term and not one you typically believed in but whatever this was.... _it definitely **wasn't** you._

__A coughing fit begun to seize your lungs. You weren't sure how a pen of all things could go through a sternum. Right now you were drowning in the taste of bitter copper, the sensation coming from inside your body was as if every piece of viscera was being put through a paper shredder, and with what mental clarity you had that wasn't reeling was attempting to desperately wrestle back control. The only thing achieved however was the state of blacking out from either blood loss or excruciating pain._ _

__Actually both. Both were a hundred percent accurate theory. And when you finally awoke, the aftermath of the two were undeniably evident._ _

__There was an itchy film of crust around your mouth, eyes, and nose. An ache deeply resounded in your chest as heavy as a rock. You were face down on the floor and the carpet was saturated to the point of its top being scratchy with the smell of iron. What happened? How long had you been like this? It hurt to sit up. Groggily you remember reading......then pain.....then a lack of air....and nothing. All lost to the black hole of unconsciousness._ _

__An intelligent thought popped in your head telling you that you were supposed to go to the E.R now. Against better judgement this was decidedly not what you did._ _

__Instead, due to feeling like hot garbage that had startlingly tried to _off themselves_ for reasons unknown, you were gonna ignore it and hope for the best. Yes, what a bright idea indeed! But to be fair, you couldn't quite wrap your head around the whole scenario in the first place. _ _

__Plus, going to the E.R. in this state would've ended with a doctor shipping you off to a mental hospital. Not to mention you didn't want to acknowledge how much of your own blood had to be scrubbed out of the floor, how time had seemingly passed more than a few days, or how pale and shaky you were. Yep. No questions were a good thing. Quite frankly you believed that _if_ this all was actually real, it was best to pretend this didn't happen and hoped to whatever would listen that you weren't already dead. _ _

__As desperate as you were to ignore reality, that swiftly became impossible because only a few days later after the incident, you had grown restless. You denied it as stubbornly as anyone with a rational mind would. The sudden worrying behavior on the other hand, begged to argue against your opinion._ _

__Firstly, bouts of mania had taken to making you go walking at night when you were absolutely sure no one else was awake. The way you jittered about and were wary of anything even coming close to you would've garnered rumours and stares._ _

__Then when back home and alone, you chewed on nearly every pen in your place right down to the thin stick of ink within out of anxiety. Surprisingly, even though it must've been toxic to ingest, you found the bitter taste to be one that relaxed your nerves. It became habit to purchase a few cheap packs at the nearest gas station because honestly those clerks have seen weirder going-ons then you popping in for writing utensil slim jims at three in the morning._ _

__(You still felt weird about it, though. With the amount you've drunk, you should be suffering from ink poisoning or death but you aren't.)_ _

__And sleep was....different, now that you found yourself sleep walking on a weekly basis. It didn't help your frazzled nerves to not know whether or not you were still dreaming when you woke up during an episode. You _swore_ gravity didn't notice you until you noticed it one time and luckily you were quick enough to grab onto the nearby window ledge. _ _

__Due to all of the ramping paranoia, you had functionally become a shut-in for two months before you scraped up just enough courage and frustration to seek out professional help. So, when you walked over the threshold of your front door and unknowingly walked into the maw of something _also_ unexplainable by logical means, it was an unwelcome bundle of surprises for a person actively avoiding such. _ _

__As it stood, you were now....here._ _

__......._ _

__.........._ _

__............._ _

__"....... _Statement ends._ " The man named Jon spoke as he clicked his tape recorder off. There wasn't a hint of disbelief or bemusement written on his features despite how off the rails you had deemed your own experience. Though, if his weathered appearance was anything to go by, this clearly wasn't his first time being involved in bizarre happenings. "How do you feel?" _ _

__Shifting in your seat, you leaned back to stare at the ceiling. Seems like the feeling of being tired and mentally drained was just routine now. "I feel, well I mean, I'm still extremely confused as to how I'm here or why I'm here, but I guess it feels cathartic to finally talk about it. I don't know. You're not a therapist and I just.... wished I knew if I'm okay or not."_ _

__Jon sighed. "Well, considering you're still alive and mentally intact enough to seek out help, I'd say you seem to be doing okay." He wasn't one for comforting others. He was rather bad at it and lately whenever he tried it seemed only to make it worse for everyone involved. Still, he had to ask another question of you. For both safety reasons and cautious curiosity. "You mentioned a book before. Do you still have it?"_ _

__Now that was the one thing you had remained unsure of. While cleaning you hadn't seen hide nor hair of the damn thing yet you felt undeniably confident that you had kept it somewhere safe. Hell if you knew why a book needed to be safe anyways. At this point you wanted to burn it. "I'm not sure, but I think I still do. Somewhere. Why?"_ _

__He looked away without giving a verbal answer. A sticky note was instead handed over to you with an air of gravity; contact information and the hours the Institute was open. "......If you find it, make sure to bring it by. Having it could help us see if there's anyway to help you."_ _

__And also help others from enduring the same harrowing experience of a Leitner. There was a reason to tell you about what exactly you had come into contact with, yet he didn't tell you since it'd be a few long stories after another to explain the danger hidden between covers. With how distressed you were already, he knew better then to push more troubling thoughts your way._ _

__"In the meantime, I'd recommend going home and trying to relax as you have. Make sure to call if _anything_ unusual occurs. And if nothing happens, we'll contact you if we find anything of use for your condition." _ _

__You stared at him. What a good idea. Simple. Refined. A great suggestion if not for one thing; "Alright. But you know I can't go home, right?"_ _

__".....Why not?"_ _

__You furiously gestured all around you. Especially towards the coffee cup with a cheesy union jack design that sat full of pencils on a shelf. Probably from a cheeky coworker with how gaudy it was, but it worked as an example of frustration and office organization at least._ _

__"....Oh." Suddenly it then clicked. Jon pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. _Right._ Before you actually gave your statement you made it clear that you were also extremely distressed due to stumbling into the Institute from a different country. He was just so out of it from having a statement (good meal technically) that he forgot. _ _

__Damn it. It wasn't at all what he felt remotely comfortable in doing, nor was it something you should do, and lord knows it was one of _the_ worst ideas personal safety wise, but there was no other choice that could get you back to where you belong quickly without a bunch of hassle over a passport. _ _

__"I guess....we'll have to talk to Helen, then."_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not used to writing self-insert fics but I figured I'd start writing this anyways because we gay for the spooky door dyad. I'm also naming chapters after songs I think fit the tone of them because I can. Also, the Leitner I made up gives you the power of cartoon physics if you survive it because it seemed like a fun and horrifying idea. If Jared can have infinite bones then I can dare to be stupid.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not used to writing self-insert fics but I'm doing so anyways because I'm big gay for the door dyad. I'll name chapters after songs I think fit the tone of such. I'll make a Leitner that gives you the power of cartoon physics if you survive it. If Jared can have infinite bones then I can dare to be as stupid as I want. Also no Spiral yet because this is the set up but as ii was said, you'll meet Helen in the next chapter.


End file.
